Essex Crossing

Essex Crossing is a planned mixed-use development in New York City's Lower East Side, part of the existing area known as the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (SPURA). The development, at the intersection of Delancey Street and Essex Street just north of Seward Park, will comprise nearly 2,000,000 square feet (200,000 m²) of space on 6 acres (2 ¹⁄₂ ha), with the start of construction scheduled for mid-2015, partial completion by mid-2021, and final completion by 2024. The development will cost an estimated US$1.1 billion. It will sit on a total of nine city blocks, most of them occupied by parking lots that replaced tenements razed in 1967.^[1][2][3][4]

Essex Crossing, originally approved as a component of the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area in October 2012, is expected to create 1,000 housing units, 1,000 permanent jobs, and 5,000 construction jobs. The project, overseen by SHoP Architects and developer Delancey Street Associates (a joint venture of L+M Development Partners, BFC Partners, and Taconic Investment Partners), will build a 60/40 mix of residential and commercial space; create 500 units of permanently affordable housing for low-, moderate-, and middle-income households, and senior housing; and allocate 15,000 square feet (1,400 m²) of publicly accessible open space.^[5][6] The plan was presented to the public in September 2013 by then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg, as a compromise solution after decades of political disagreements over the site.^[7][8]

History

Seward Park Urban Renewal Area

Site of the Essex Crossing, with the Blue Tower in the background, Essex Street Market to the left, and the intersection of Essex and Delancey Streets in the foreground. All of the buildings in the foreground will be replaced in the project (photo: September 2013)

Historically, the Lower East Side was an immigrant neighborhood, including Germans, Irish, Italians, and Hispanics; Essex Crossing was envisioned during the neighborhood's period of gentrification,^[9] but this part of the Lower East Side is an area alternatively known as SPURA, which has been up for development since the mid-1960s. SPURA which covers five vacant plots of land acquired as part of a 1965 urban renewal plan, near Delancey and Grand Streets. These sites were originally part of the broader Seward Park Urban Renewal Area, a federal program designed to tear down several tenements to develop low-income housing, called the Cooperative Village. Some original SPURA land was eventually developed, but five lots remain vacant to this day.^[10] As SPURA was the largest tract of undeveloped New York City-owned land in Manhattan south of 96th Street,^[11] deciding what the “appropriate redevelopment” of SPURA would be had stalled the process and kept it undeveloped.

In 1967, New York City leveled 20 acres on the southern side of Delancey Street and removed more than 1,800 low-income largely Puerto Rican families, with a promise that they would return to new low-income apartments when they were built. However, political corruption abounded, and the new apartments were never built.^[8] The competing forces within the neighborhood had been debating whether the SPURA area should be used to develop affordable housing within Manhattan Community Board 3, whether some mixed use – low and middle income as well as commercial – or all large commercial retail should be created. This debate is often waged in the community halls of local public school auditoriums and other city meeting places, in newspaper columns,^[12][13] at coop board meetings, and at private strategy sessions in individual homes.

During the Koch administration that ended in 1989, the city contracted with Sam LeFrak to build,^[14] but massive divided opposition caused it to be withdrawn. The land still sat vacant in 2012.

In January and February 2011, the local community board took the issue of SPURA's development up and came to a community consensus that the area will be built to accommodate mixed use of low income housing, commercial properties/retail spaces and market value homes.^[15] The Board, community and city planners and public officials will finalize the plans for development.^[1]

On October 11, 2012, the New York City Council approved the project, then still referred to as SPURA, in a unanimous vote.^[6] On September 18, 2013, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled a definite plan for the Essex Crossing project.^[7]

Construction progress

In June 2014, demolition of structures in the area commenced, to make way for the development.^[16]

On August 2, 2014, it was revealed that a municipal parking lot at Broome and Essex Streets would be closed for soil testing and for planning of the future Warhol museum. Groundbreaking for the crossing was said to come as early as spring 2015, though a definite groundbreaking timeline has not been published.^[17] On December 31, another parking lot was closed, this time a private one on Suffolk Street.^[18]

Final designs for Essex Crossing will be released on January 14, 2015. The Essex Street Market and a firehouse on Broome Street will be demolished by early 2015.^[19]

Description

Upon its completion, it will comprise the Essex Street Market, restaurants, office space, a movie theater, and a park.^[5][7]

Ultimately, Essex Crossing, split among ten sequentially numbered lots, will be built on the east side of Essex Street between Stanton and Delancey Streets (lots 8, 9, and 10); the municipal parking lot at Broome and Essex Streets (lot 7); an area bounded by Attorney, Broome, Essex, and Delancey Streets (lots 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6); and a block bounded by Grand, Clinton, Broome, and Suffolk Streets (lot 5).^[19]

Existing

Housing

Existing Seward Park towers

There are both public housing and condominiums in the area:

• Public housing: In the SPURA area, the Seward Park Housing Corporation, part of the Cooperative Village, is located in the triangle between Grand Street and East Broadway, and abuts Seward Park. The buildings, designed by Herman Jessor,^[20] were finished in 1959.
• Condominiums: The Blue Tower at 105 Norfolk Street in the SPURA area, designed by Bernard Tschumi, opened in 2007 with 32 condominium apartments over 16 stories, a ground floor commercial space occupied by the Thierry Goldberg Gallery, and a roof terrace for residents on the third floor, using a common setup with commercial space at the ground floor with residential space above. The Blue Tower is not LEED certified. The tower had a characteristic slant that sets it apart from other buildings in the vicinity.^[21]

Essex Street Market

Essex Street Market, pre-reconstruction

The Essex Street Market is an indoor retail market that was one of a number of such facilities built in the 1930s under the administration of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia at 120 Essex Street, at Delancey Street. The Essex Street Market, which was a group of markets constructed in the 1940s^[22] to reduce pushcart congestion on the narrow streets of the Lower East Side, is operated and managed by the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC). The 15,000-square-foot (1,400 m²) market is made up of approximately 35 individual stalls that range in size from 90 to 600 square feet (8 to 60 m²).^[23]

It was in September 2013 that it was announced that the market would be integrated into the Essex Crossing.^[7] The new building will have 39 stalls and two restaurants.^[19]

Essex Street municipal parking lot

An existing parking garage at 107 Essex Street, north of Delancey Street, is also being renovated as part of the redevelopment plan. Originally slated to be converted into housing under an idea by Councilwoman Margaret Chin, it was dropped from the project and later put back on.^[24][25]

New

Broome Street park

Part of the development includes a new public park on Broome Street between Suffolk and Clinton streets, spanning 15,000 square feet (1,400 m²). The park, which is part of the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area, will start construction in early 2015 with an estimated completion of 2017. The park, contrary to other city parks, will only be 35% planted, with open spaces, signage, bike racks, and skateboard-proof park benches. It will include a playground for toddlers, in anticipation of a new primary school nearby.^[26][27][28]

Lowline park

The large trolley terminal under Delancey and Essex Streets has sat unused for 60 years,^[29] and a new park is being proposed there.^[30][31]

The project was first proposed in 2011 and has quickly generated widespread media attention. In 2012, the project successfully raised over $150,000 from 3,300 backers on Kickstarter to create a full-scale exhibition of the solar lighting technology.^[32] The project was named by Mashable as one of the top Kickstarter projects of that year.^[33] If completed, it would be within the Essex Crossing development

Housing

Half of the 1,000 units^[1] to be constructed at the crossing will be affordable housing.^[5] While five buildings will be completed as early as 2018, the entire housing complex will not be completed until 2021.^[2]

Housing on lots 1, 2, 5, and 6 will be completed first, in fall 2015, followed by Lot 8 in fall 2016 and lots 3 and 4 in spring 2017; lots 9 and 10 will be finished last, between 2019 and 2022. Most of the housing will be on lots 1, 2, 5, and 6, which will start construction in early 2015. They will have a combined 556 units, including 311 affordable units and 100 for senior residents. There will also be 155 condominiums, with 37 or 38 of them affordable.^[19]

Warhol museum

A 10,000-square-foot (900 m²) annex to the main Pittsburgh museum, the Warhol building was scheduled to open by 2017.^[2][34][35] Plans for this museum were canceled in March 2013.^[36]

Movie theater

In October 2014, a 65,000 square feet (6,000 m²) movie theater, with 14 screens, was announced.^[37] It will be at Delancey and Essex Streets and operated by Regal Cinemas.^[38] There will be digital cinema projectors and recliners with padded footrests, among other amenities. It will begin construction in spring 2015 and be completed by 2017 or 2018.^[39]

Political controversy

The SPURA area, now the Essex Crossing's site, was kept empty, except for parking lots, since 1967 due to suspected political alliances.^[8]

In 1977, then-to-be-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty (Met Council) head William "Bill" Rapfogel accompanied then-mayor Edward Koch through the area, promising to turn some 20 acres (8.1 ha) of barren land on Delancey Street's south side into a never-delivered development that had displaced more than 1,800 residents a decade before.^[8]

Rapfogel and Silver were accused of promoting specific plans for favored developers, which would maintain the area's Jewish identity, at the expense of other communities. They opposed a 1970s plan for affordable housing, which would have changed the demographics of the neighborhood and brought in more Chinese and Hispanic residents. Silver instead proposed a shopping center with no housing for the site in the 1980s. In the 1990s, they proposed a “big box” store, like Costco, to be built by Bruce Ratner, a developer. Ratner hired Rapfogel's eldest son in 2007, and Silver employed Rapfogel's wife as his chief of staff. Ratner also helped raise $1 million for the Met Council.^[8][40]

See also

• Delancey Street – Essex Street, a nearby subway station served by the F J M Z trains

References

External links

• Official website

SPURA:

• SPURA facts
• Curbed.com on SPURA
• Downtown Express - Seward Park Housing
• Downtown Express - Crowd of Hundreds

Neighborhoods in the New York City borough of Manhattan
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